President Obama this week brought his unique brand of leadership to the U.S. Military Academy. Speaking at the West Point graduation, the commander-in-chief outlined a foreign policy that sharply differed from the Bush Doctrine that was proclaimed from that same podium eight years ago.

Carr and 809 other Virginia scientists and academics signed a petition launched by the activist Union of Concerned Scientists, protesting Commonwealth Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli’s investigation of former University of Virginia professor Michael Mann.

The country needed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and other federal intervention. Many states had enacted laws that prevented free enterprise. It was up to Washington to restore choice to millions of citizens.

There’s a giant paradox in the nation’s housing market now. Mortgage interest rates have fallen to near all-time lows, yet homeowners as a whole are in a state of unease not seen since the Great Depression.

Despite this week’s celebration of Small Business Week by the federal government recognizing efforts made by employers in creating opportunities for millions of Americans, the Obama Administration’s support for proposals that result in forced unionization could lead to the extinction of these very same businesses.

You know the basics. The unemployment rate is 9.9 percent. Jobs are still being lost. Worries about the global economy are causing breathtaking volatility on Wall Street. And millions of Americans who still have jobs are worrying more than ever about the safety of their retirement savings.

Barney Frank and his friends are rolling their tanks through Congress while everyone is talking about something else. As we reel from one crisis to the next, homosexual activists and their allies are muscling through their agenda, with nary a peep from the nation’s conservative talking heads.

President Obama used about an hour of his press conference yesterday trying to explain how - in spite of his handlers' having spent the past month trotting out the Secretary of the Interior, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Commandant of the Coast Guard to be the faces of the Gulf of Ocean oil spill - that he, Barack Obama, had been personally on top of this situation from the moment the drilling rig exploded until that very moment.

In the heart of central Florida lies the state’s Twelfth Congressional District. Following the announcement that the current Congressman, Adam Putnam, would run for Florida Agriculture Commissioner, Democrats immediately set their sights on this seat.

President Bush's harshest critics often described his look during moments of crisis as "deer in the headlights." After two years of Hope and Change, America has grown accustomed to President Obama's crisis face: eyes glazed over.

One advantage Biden has over Obama is he can always claim he was "just being Joe" whenever he says something controversial. In this way, Biden reminds me a bit of the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who would say "nice" things in English and evil things in Arabic.

At a New Jersey town meeting, Gov. Chris Christie, the newest YouTube star for the limited government set, was reproached by an unhappy teacher. The governor, facing a budget shortfall of $11 billion, has proposed, among other economies, a one-year salary freeze for New Jersey teachers.

Iran is just short of becoming a nuclear power, and nearly every nation on earth is worried. Israel worries most of all. Nuclear weapons will afford Iran the means to deliver on its threat to "wipe Israel off the map," as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad so cheerfully puts it.

Political payoffs are so commonplace in Washington that I was initially unable to muster an appropriate level of outrage at hearing that Rep. Joe Sestak had accused the Obama administration of offering him a job in exchange for his withdrawal from the Pennsylvania Democratic senatorial primary.

One day Team Obama announces a plan for enhanced rescission authority to impound wasteful spending, and the next day the House surfaces a plan for $200 billion in "stimulus" spending on transfer payments for welfare, even more unemployment compensation, still more Medicaid and a bunch of special-interest subsidies.

Since last month's oil-spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, two very different leadership styles have been on display. On the one hand we have President Obama, who took nine days before making a public statement on the spill.

While Tom Ganley plans to put his experience to work in helping to turn the economy around, incumbent Rep. Betty Sutton continues to vote in lock-step with Speaker Pelosi on issues like the failed stimulus, job-killing cap-and-trade legislation and a government takeover of healthcare.

This Memorial Day Weekend, Americans remember not only our fallen soldiers, but also soldiers currently fighting in hostile lands under atrocious conditions.
But there's another duty upon us as Americans with a debt of gratitude to our armed forces.

A friend mentioned in conversation yesterday that his new employment situation is not working out quite as expected. He had left a secure job and moved to a small business, but the new venture was not proceeding as planned. As a way to change the course of the business, my friend has proposed a few ideas and options to the business owner.

Last year, Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize not for what he did, but for what he represented -- to the European judges a new post-national American president. His subsequent apology tours abroad have emphasized American sins without much discussion of the context of the times.

Hillary Clinton did it and it worked for her when she ran for the Senate in New York, so now Republicans will give it a go. It's the listening tour, except unlike Hillary, who traveled from town to town, Republicans plan to stay in one place and invite you to come to them.

President Obama spoke in the unfinished hull of a new factory built by solar-panel manufacturer Solyndra in Fremont, Calif., Wednesday to highlight his administration's focus on creating jobs. Problem: Solyndra has never turned a profit since it was founded in 2005.

I have been meeting with what the intelligentsia once called "the masses." They read books. They pay taxes. They attend lectures. Oh, and by the way, they are now a lot more prosperous and even more civilized than the intelligentsia, today's version of which are actually anti-intellectual and occasionally only semi-literate.

Before what he calls "the jaw-dropping" events of the last 19 months -- TARP, the stimulus, Government Motors, the mistreatment of Chrysler's creditors, Obamacare, etc. -- the idea of running for office never crossed Ron Johnson's mind.

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee will likely vote on whether to promote District Judge Robert Chatigny to a life-tenured seat on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. Any citizen who expects judges to bring the most heinous criminals to justice should be seriously concerned about this nomination.

Wed, May 26, 2010

Obama had lunch with Senate Republicans on Tuesday, but the conversation that transpired was enough to make you lose your lunch. According to reports, the President went plumb crazy when it came time to talk about bi-partisanship and legislative policy.

Watching TV this week, at first I thought Republican Senate nominee Rand Paul had flown a commercial jet into the World Trade Center. But then it turned out that he had only said there ought to be discussion about whether federal civil rights laws should be applied to private businesses.

After three months of zipped lips and feigned ignorance, the Obama White House is finally taking real heat over Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak's consistent claims that the administration offered him a job to drop his Senate bid.

With legislated increases, Samoa's minimum wage is $5.25. So the question is: Which is preferable for the Samoan worker -- being employed at $3.25 an hour or being unemployed at $5.25? Which buys more of life's essentials?

Historically, the American public -- confident, independent and undemanding-has not expected much out of Washington. Live your silver lives of limousines, private jets, power and celebrity; just do no permanent damage to the nation.

Rand Paul’s amazing meltdown in his first week as the GOP Senate nominee in Kentucky raises serious questions about media conspiracies – not because the network talking heads decided to ask him tough questions, but because they waited to pose those challenges until after he’d won his primary and the Republicans were stuck with him.

Courtesy of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Thursday Israel will again be the target of a jihadist-leftist propaganda assault. A flotilla of nine ships which set sail for Gaza from Cyprus earlier this week is scheduled to arrive at our doorstep.

Rep. Joe Sestak, the winner of the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate primary, says quite openly and repeatedly that he was offered a job by the White House if he would drop out of the race against Sen. Arlen Specter.

Ohio’s ninth district residents aren’t unhappy with their Democratic representative, Marcy Kaptur. There are 10% more Democratic voters than Republican voters in the district, and Kaptur has held the seat for 14 consecutive terms. But this election cycle is different.

Last week, James Clyburn, a former civil rights activist who is now a Democratic congressman from South Carolina, warned that if Rand Paul is elected to represent Kentucky in the Senate, "it will be the first step ... to turning back the gains that we started making way back in the 1860s."

When a storm represents a clear and present danger to people and their property, radar tracks the storm to determine strength and direction. Authorities begin to educate the people about the threat through the media.

Currently represented by freshman Democrat Frank Kratovil, Maryland’s First Congressional District generally leans Republican according to election history and maintains a strong trace of conservatism, despite the even number of registered Democrats and Republicans.

The Obama administration has made economic recovery a priority, but unfortunately the Administration is continuing a practice that has the opposite economic effect -- targeting America’s prize technology companies with vague antitrust laws.

In 1996, it became illegal in the United States to perform the operation commonly called “female genital mutilation” (FGM). That law makes it clear that surgery is allowable only for specific medical conditions.

A heartbreaking social statistic is that children on welfare have only about half as many words per day directed at them as the children of working-class families-- and less than one-third as many words as children whose parents are professionals.

Watching U.S. members of the House and Senate, and the president's Cabinet in a joint session of Congress stand and applaud Mexican President Felipe Calderon's slam of Arizona's new immigration enforcement law, I thought, "What a despicable act of disloyalty to one of their own states and a ludicrous leadership move to boot, especially when 71 percent of Arizonians agree with its new immigration law. "

Liberals have a learning disability when it comes to the impracticability of socialism. They are so steeped in the seductive lies of false compassion that no amount of logic, history or everyday experience registers. Thus, they continue to burden the market system to an unsustainable level.

I'm often asked whether I support Sarah Palin for president. I don't. But I do very much support her as America's next Oprah. Her cultural antennae are exquisitely sensitive, and she relishes combat. "Sarah's book club" would be an improvement.

After weeks of comments from the public and heated rhetoric between Republicans and Democrats on the Republican-controlled board, the Texas State Board of Education members voted along party lines on what to teach 4.8 million Texas public school students about history, social studies and math over the next 10 years.

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." That was the slogan of the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's "1984," where Winston Smith worked ceaselessly revising the past to conform to the latest party line of Big Brother.

Would you be satisfied if your only access to a computer was to try to boot up one that hadn't been used or tested since 1992? That's the predicament of our nuclear deterrent on which we depend for our ultimate physical survival.

Although it is a historically Democratic state, Arkansas has been trending in the GOP direction over recent years. Democrat retiree Vic Snyder’s support of the Obama-Pelosi big-government agenda of more spending and less jobs has only accelerated the pace.

There's an intense debate going on behind the scenes among Republicans involved in the Elena Kagan Supreme Court nomination. It's about whether the GOP should to try to stop Kagan, because that's what Democrats would do in the same situation, or whether Republicans should concede that Kagan is qualified and vote to confirm her because the president has the right to expect the Senate to approve qualified nominees.

Dr. Rand Paul was hoping for a “honeymoon” after his thumping victory in the Republican U.S. Senate primary in Kentucky. No such luck. Dr. Paul is a conservative Christian and if he wants a another honeymoon, he needs to talk to his wife.

This month, three members of Congress have been beaten in their bids for re-election -- a Republican senator from Utah, a Democratic congressman from West Virginia and a Republican-turned-Democrat senator from Pennsylvania.

It now seems that the good Muslim citizens of The University of California Irvine (UCI) Muslim Student Union (MSU) lied when they repeatedly denied orchestrating systematic interruptions of an invited guest.

On Thursday the South Korean government did something important. It told the truth about North Korean aggression. On March 26, a North Korean submarine attacked a South Korean naval corvette with a torpedo.

This week, our debt will pass $13 trillion. Nouriel Roubini, former Clinton White House economist, said on Fox News, "What has happened in Greece could happen in the U.S. We could have serious problems. We have the debt of the federal government. Many state and local governments are bankrupt. There are unfunded liabilities for social security. There are unfunded liabilities for state pensions."

Nevada is a politically divided state, and Rep. Dina Titus (D) is having a hard time hitting all of the right notes. That’s going to prove especially difficult come November, when she’s up for re-election against a tough Republican opponent.

Sun, May 23, 2010

The honest take-away from last Tuesday’s primaries in Pennsylvania, Arkansas and Kentucky – including the special election in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District – is that any bearing on November’s midterms is as clear as mud.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon got the tough new Arizona immigration law wrong when he told Congress on Thursday, "It is a law that not only ignores a reality -- but also introduces a terrible idea of racial profiling as the basis for law enforcement."

The veil, we are told, is a symbol of oppression imposed on women by husbands and other male relatives. Could be. But how do the critics know? The same thing can be said about surgically enhanced breasts in Europe and the United States.

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